A blog full of bits of historical information, comments & observations, photographs (old and new), oddball ramblings and other totally random stuff.

Friday, November 15, 2013

11 FLETCHER STREET...

I’ve got two of the three elements this week:
photo of the doorway of a particular house number; what’s missing, though, is
the element of a relatively high body mass index...

...here I am on the front porch of 11 Fletcher Street
in Portland, Maine.

My family moved from Boston
to Portland in
the early 1950s. My parents bought this lovely old federal on Fletcher Street for
something like $12,000; its market value today would knock my socks off.

I could see the water from my bedroom window;
I remember lying in bed, listening to my radio and watching fishing boats and
the occasional tanker navigate the harbor. Later on, my parents gave me a window
sill shelf-feeder, and I filled it with birdseed every morning before school...and
watched birds at my window – inches away from me – sparrows and pigeons,
mostly, but it was pretty magical!

I have no idea what I’m holding in my hands –
I’ve blown this photo up, magnified it, used every technical alteration Picasa
can offer, but I still can’t figure it out. But whatever it is, I’m clearly pleased
about it; a small smile...

I’ve got my school clothes on: my wool skirt,
little sweater top; the ribbons on my braids may or may not match the color of
my underwear (I apparently picked ribbons that coordinated not with my outer
clothing, but with my inner clothing
– a habit that baffled my mother for a very long time!). I’ve got my sturdy
brown leather shoes and striped socks...I still like striped socks, by the way.

Like so many Federals (and Greek Revivals), the
house on Fletcher Street had a heavy frame-and-panel Christian door, sometimes
called a Cross & Bible door here in New England – the framing on the top
four panels in the shape of a cross, on the lower two the spine of an open book.

That gorgeous brass door knocker looks
ridiculously high on this door; it’s positioned for one of Gulliver’s
Brobdingnagians, while the mail slot is clearly for a Lilliputian. That knocker
has followed my family around for four generations; I am of the fifth to own
it...

31 comments:

What fun sharing some of your backstory. I wonder, since you're clearly all dressed for school, that possibly you're holding something for Show and Tell at school? My first thought just looking at the picture, before reading, was that you were holding a small gift for someone?

It's a wonderful doorway, by far the finest I have seen on my trip through the posts this morning. And it is a fine photo as well. What you are holding is a piece of paper on which is written the answer to the thing I can't see in my Sepia Saturday picture this week!

That was an education I would have never imagined, the reasoning for the shape of that door. I've always loved doors like this and never really stopped to think about the design.

And you've reminded me of the tuna can I nailed to a porch railing at my apartment in Los Angeles. I was on the top floor and with that tuna can outside my window I had the joys of watching the birds come to feed as I sat working at my desk.

Taking the door knocker with you is interesting, as is the name of the door design. Surprised you can't remember what you were holding but know that your socks would have matched your underwear though!

At last!

In the early 1800s, five families settle on the Eastern River in Pittston, Maine. Together, they build a strong and lasting agricultural neighborhood based on New England values of community and reciprocity. Both fiction and social history, The Eastern flows through the experiences and truths we share with those who have lived before us.